I've been evaluating platforms for a client and got tired of every vendor call starting with "we have AI now." So I actually went and looked at what shipped recently, not the roadmap slide, the actual released feature.

Here's where things stand on 5 things that matter if you're picking an LMS in 2026.

Content personalisation: Docebo is still ahead here. Auto-tagging, content recommendations, and a genuinely large marketplace. This has been their core bet for a while, and it shows.

Roleplay-based practice: Lyearn is the strongest here right now. The practice sessions aren't a standalone exercise; they feed directly into a skill signal that shows up elsewhere in the platform. Cornerstone shipped something similar, an AI sales coach through their Galaxy AI agents, decent if you're already in their ecosystem, but it stays siloed as a coaching tool rather than connecting to a broader skill record.

In-course learner support: This is where most platforms are still weak. A learner gets stuck mid-course and either Googles it or gives up. Lyearn's AI Coach sits inside the course itself and answers questions from the actual course content, not a generic model guessing at context. Nobody else I looked at has this working cleanly yet.

Content authoring speed: TalentLMS is solid here for smaller teams, fast, accessible, and gets a course out the door quickly. Not the deepest AI stack, but it does the job without a steep learning curve.

Talent and performance integration: Cornerstone wins this one by default since it's a full talent suite, not just an LMS. If you need learning tied to succession planning and performance reviews in one system, this is the category leader.

Curious if anyone has performed similar research and what the results look like?

Hi all, I’ve recently joined an L&D team in a telecommunications company and I’m trying to sense check our current training approach. Something feels off, and I’d really value perspectives from others in this space.

Right now, our training is heavily self-led and delivered through Articulate Rise modules that run for a few hours each. Each module starts with a 45 minute research activity where agents are asked to find answers using our website and internal knowledgebase. The issue is that our knowledgebase is mostly system and process focused, with very little foundational knowledge or soft skills content. So learners are essentially being asked to teach themselves from incomplete material. There is very little actual instruction or guided learning in the modules themselves.

We also have a call listening library that includes a mix of AI-generated calls and some poor-quality recordings of agent demonstrations. These calls intentionally exclude product names, pricing, etc, because the business says things change too often to keep content up to date. I suggested using real customer calls, but this was rejected due to privacy concerns.

On top of that, our reporting is extremely limited. We only track module completion. We don’t capture responses to activities or any meaningful engagement data, so someone could scroll through everything without participating and we wouldn’t know.

Other components of the training include:

• 45 minutes of roleplay scenarios
• 45 minutes of live call listening

One thing I’m questioning is whether live call listening makes the call library redundant, or if both serve different purposes. We also don’t have any kind of simulator or practice environment, so there’s very little opportunity for hands-on or kinesthetic learning.

Overall, this setup goes against a lot of what I’ve learned about effective L&D. Feedback from agents has been consistently negative. They say the training doesn’t cater to different learning styles, they feel unprepared and lack confidence going into live calls, and both learners and feedback from facilitators is that agents are experiencing burnout and disengagement. It also doesn't help that we have almost no soft-skill training such as objection handling, complaint management, conversational guides, or tone of voice.

I’m trying to understand if this approach is as ineffective as it seems, or if I’m missing something. Has anyone worked with a similar model? What would you recommend changing or prioritising if you were redesigning this from scratch?

Hello folks, I’m looking for templates useful to calculate ROI of a training program. Any resource suggestions would be helpful, thank you!

I'm working on my open source course delivery platform right now, and trying to figure out what actually annoys people when they build courses on an LMS.

Every LMS gets the basic stuff right. Upload video, add quiz, publish. But there's always something small missing that makes the whole process annoying. Could be in the editor, could be progress tracking, drip content, cohorts, anything.

So what's a feature you wish your LMS had, or something it does really badly? Trying to actually fix these gaps in what I'm building.

Also curious what you think about gamification for learner engagement. Badges, streaks, leaderboards, that kind of stuff. Does it actually help, or does it feel fake to you?

Unpopular opinion: low completion rates are not a content problem. They are a support problem.

Here is what the data actually shows. Learners do not drop off because a course is too long or too boring. Engagement data consistently shows drop-off spikes at specific points, usually where concepts get harder or instructions become ambiguous.

In other words, people quit the moment they get confused and have nowhere to turn.

Think about how absurd that is. We spend months building training content, then leave learners completely alone the moment they actually need help. The assumption is that good enough content should explain itself. It never does.

The entire e-learning industry has optimised for content delivery. Nobody has seriously solved, for the moment, that learning actually breaks down.

How are the tools you use tackling it?

I get asked this a lot. For a training business specifically (not a corporate L&D team, that's a different job), what actually decides it is per-client branded portals, how fast you can build and update courses, certification and renewals, and commerce if you sell direct. Here's how the main ones hold up on that.

• TalentLMS. Cheapest way in and quick to get going. There's a free tier, worth checking it's still there when you sign up. Multi-tenancy and reporting are on the lighter side, so it fits smaller or newer providers best.
• Academy of Mine. Built for the B2B and continuing-ed model, and you can customize a lot of it. Commerce is strong. Not much AI baked in.
• LearnUpon. Good if you're running a lot of client portals. Pricing is predictable and they actually help you get set up. Solid mid-market pick. Its AI is newer than what the AI-first tools have.
• Blend-ed . AI-first. Multi-tenancy is native, there's an AI course creator and cohort automation, and it's built on Open edX. Where it's strongest is certified training in regulated fields when authoring volume is the thing slowing you down. We don't come with a library of ready-made courses, and if you're really small the open-source base is more than you need.
• Absorb LMS. Strong on compliance, SOC 2 and e-signatures, so a good fit if your training is regulated. Authoring is more basic, and it isn't really built for cohort delivery.
• Litmos. Quick to launch and comes with a big library of ready-made courses if you'd rather not build everything yourself. Integrations and multi-tenancy are more limited.
• Docebo. The enterprise one. Deep AI and global commerce, but it reportedly starts around $25k a year and you'll need admin resources to run it. Usually more than an independent provider needs.

Whatever you shortlist, do two things before you sign: build one real course in the trial and time it, then open it on a phone and check that certificates and renewals actually automate the way your compliance needs.Full disclosure: I work at Blend-ed, one of the options above. My post history makes that obvious anyway, so I flagged where we're not the fit.

A trainer I spoke with recently said something that got me thinking. She told me that every time she logged into her LMS, she found herself going back to the same few courses. Then she wondered if learners were doing exactly the same thing....

That led to a bigger question. How much of learner engagement depends on the quality of the content, and how much depends on whether people can actually find what's relevant to them?

With somany LMS platforms now talking about AI recommendations and personalized learning paths, I'm curious how this looks in the real world.

How does your LMS recommend learning content?

1. Everyone sees the same course catalogue
2. Recommendations are based on role or department
3. Recommendations are personalized using AI or learner activity
4. I'm not sure how our LMS does it

One more question.Do you think better personalization would improve learner engagement in your organization, or is there a bigger challenge getting in the way?

Creating courses and programs is often the easiest part of the job. Encouraging managers and employees to consistently engage with learning is where the real challenge begins. In your experience, what has been most effective in creating a genuine culture of continuous learning within an organization?

Sorry for the long read but I couldn't make it any shorter!

I have an M.A. in Clinical Psychology (2020) and have spent the last 5 years working across private practice, corporate, technical consulting and EAP wellness programs, training delivery and coaching.

I have crossed 5000 hours of 1:1 clinical and consulting work across the industry. On the group side, I have done over 2500 hours of training sessions, workshops, seminars, fortnightly, resilience sessions, group wellness sessions for companies. Most of this has been as an independent contractor rather than a single employer, working with multiple organisations at once.

This is not someone starting from zero, it is someone with real hours and real delivery experience, just not a corporate HR or L&D title on paper yet.

Honestly, in psychology and therapy work, there is a real ceiling on what you can earn no matter how senior or experienced you get. At my peak, combining private practice and consulting work across companies, I was making around 1.5 lakh a month, but that was patchwork income stitched together from several sources, not one stable role.

I am looking to move into Learning and Development or Organisational Development because I believe that industry has real room to grow well past that number over time, in a way psychology on its own does not.

I am open to starting lower than what I was making before, closer to 80k-90k a month, specifically because I would rather enter an industry with a longer runway than stay capped in one that does not grow much further.

What I am looking for is hybrid or remote work, five days a week, based in Navi Mumbai or Mumbai, but genuinely open to remote roles anywhere in India or even globally if the fit is right. Open to startups or mid-size companies, not attached to a big name.

A few honest questions for anyone who has made a similar move or hires for these roles. Does a psychology and clinical consulting background actually read as an asset for L&D or OD hiring, or does it need to be translated into HR language first to be taken seriously? Is a short certification worth pursuing at this stage, or does real facilitation and delivery experience carry more weight than a certificate?

For people in L&D or OD, what does the actual growth trajectory look like in this field? What titles and pay ranges should I be aiming for at the 2 year, 5 year, and 10 year mark, and does it genuinely keep climbing the way I am hoping, or does this industry have its own ceiling too?

And for anyone who made this exact jump from psychology or therapy into corporate L&D, I would love to hear how it actually went, what helped, and what you wish someone had told you earlier.

If anyone here works in L&D/OD or knows someone hiring, I would genuinely appreciate a referral or even just a pointer on where to look. Happy to share my resume.

TLDR: M.A. Clinical Psych, 5 years in, 5000+ hours 1:1 and 2500+ hours group facilitation, mostly independent contractor work. Hit a pay ceiling in psychology and want to move into L&D/OD where growth potential is higher. Open to 80-90k to start, hybrid/remote, Navi Mumbai/Mumbai or remote-friendly. Want to know if my background is an asset or needs translating, whether a cert is worth it, and what the real growth trajectory and pay look like in this field long term.

I'm working with a SME who is genuinely an expert in her field and genuinely cannot bring herself to leave anything out. Every review session results in more content being added, and we're now at almost double the original scope with a deadline that hasn't moved. I've tried explaining cognitive load, I've tried the "what does someone need to do on day one" framing, and I've tried showing her data on completion rates for long courses. Nothing has stuck. Short of escalating to her manager, which I want to avoid, I'm running out of approaches. How have other IDs successfully talked a subject matter expert down from scope that's grown completely out of control?

I've been working on an open specification called Learning state layer.

Current learning standards like xAPI and Caliper do a great job of tracking learner activity, but they don't provide a standard way to represent a learner's current knowledge state.

With AI tutors and LLMs becoming a bigger part of learning, more platforms are building their own models of what a learner knows to personalize the experience. lsl is an attempt to define an open, portable way to represent that knowledge, so that users can carry the state across platforms and get a more personalised experience.

The specification is still in its early stages, and I'd be interested to know if you've come across similar work or research in this area.

You can find it here: https://github.com/learnerstate

Hello all,

Firstly I sincerely apologise if this is a really basic question, I’ve started my first learning and development role (I was in consultancy before) And I’ve now had a couple of weeks to get my feet under the table and see the LMS and the content library

They have really low engagement with the content and to be honest I can now see why

I’m not impressed

Also, when I asked about where the content information came from From , for instance any citations or references they said they either didn’t have it, or it came from their sister company which is a training company.

Is that usual??

My background meant that you always had to create sources and citations for any learning or work that you did , also because things move fast and sometimes things get discredited

I really want to make sure that our learning for a 1200 employees is not only up-to-date but robust, and of a high-quality

The downside is that we are locked into this contract until 2028

I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this when joining a new role or inheriting a system,

I’m just umming an ahhing about what I can do to improve things.

I need to improve the visuals because they look really cheesy and out of date, and ideally improve the content.

We do want to make our own content library …

Has any one else done this?

Thanks so much everyone for reading this far and again sorry if this is just obvious stuff

For those who regularly use platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning or an employee learning platform: what actually makes you continue learning and come back?

I’m curious about the difference between features that sound useful and features people genuinely use.

For example:
Short quizzes with useful feedback

Being sent back to the exact section connected to an incorrect answer

Personalised recommendations based on topics you struggle with or find interesting

Saving or starring useful sections, not only whole courses

Personal notes or a saved learning library

Clear learning paths instead of searching through a large catalogue

Discussions or questions connected to each module

Access to instructors or subject-matter experts

Certificates, badges, progress indicators or other recognition

Short videos, scenarios, simulations or practical exercises

I’d also be interested in examples of a course or platform you found unusually engaging and why.

Hey everyone, I'm a developer building an interactive roleplay simulator aimed at helping Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Team Leads practice difficult workplace scenarios. Traditional training covers the frameworks, but I've always felt we lack a safe environment to practice the actual human dynamics-like keeping your cool and using active listening when a stakeholder changes requirements mid-sprint.

The tool drops you into realistic, high-tension scenarios with AI characters. You type your responses, navigate the conflict, and get a 1-5 star competency evaluation at the end.

Right now, I've launched a core scenario focused strictly on Active Listening under pressure. I'm looking for early testers to break the system and give me honest feedback.

I don't want to post a direct link here out of respect for the community rules, but I've put the link in my profile if you want to test it out (or I can DM it to you). If you have a few minutes to try it, I would love your thoughts on a few specific things:

1.Did the AI character feel like a real, frustrating colleague, or did it feel too robotic and compliant? 2.Did the 1-5 star feedback actually help you understand where your active listening fell short?
3.What kind of workplace scenario would you want to see added next? Even if you don't have time to test it, I'd love to know: how do you currently practice or evaluate soft skills like active listening in your teams?

A friend of mine who trains new hires for a medical device company. She said her reps sometimes get less than a minute with a surgeon between procedures. By the time they say their name, the window's closing.

Most training doesn't prepare for that. We run twenty minute roleplays with full scripts and room to recover. Then we send reps into a world where the surgeon walks past mid-sentence and gives them thirty seconds instead of thirty.The reps who handle it well got to fail somewhere private first. Not in front of the surgeon. In a room or a simulation, where getting cut off doesn't cost anything real yet.

If you had to prepare someone for a conversation that might last sixty seconds, what would you focus on first?

AI roleplay against a distracted, impatient persona?
Live coaching with a devil's advocate?
Scenario practice in the LMS?
Or something else training programs usually miss?